Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a drawing apparatus, a lithography system, a pattern data creation method, a drawing method, and a method of manufacturing articles.
Description of the Related Art
There is a conventional drawing apparatus that includes a plurality of electronic optical systems (hereinafter, simply referred to as “optical systems”) capable of emitting a plurality of electron beams to draw a pattern on a substrate. For example, in a case where the optical systems are arrayed in a row on a horizontal surface, each optical system can draw a pattern in each stripe-shaped region having a long side extending in a direction perpendicular to the array direction.
According to the above-mentioned drawing method, a plurality of optical systems can simultaneously draw patterns in different shot regions. Of course, drawing operations by the different optical systems can be performed in the same shot region at different timings. However, if the substrate causes a deformation due to thermal influence, a pattern straddling a border between two neighboring regions drawn at different timings may be split. The yield rate will decrease in the manufacturing of semiconductor elements.
As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-19434, it is conventionally known that a drawing apparatus can perform overlapping drawing in such a way as to prevent a pattern from being split when deflection accuracy is insufficient. The overlapping drawing is characterized by partly overlapping regions drawn with two neighboring beams of a plurality of beams emitted from one optical system. In this case, the drawing apparatus does not perform the overlapping drawing to draw a pattern in a region to be drawn with only one of two beams and performs the overlapping drawing to draw a pattern in a region to be drawn with two beams.
When a plurality of optical systems is provided in a drawing apparatus, drawing operations by all optical systems are not always performed at the same place on different chips. Therefore, the drawing apparatus needs to perform processing for dividing graphic design data corresponding to a drawing pattern (e.g., a circuit pattern) in such a way as to match a stripe-shaped region to be drawn by each optical system and converting the divided data into pattern data. More specifically, it is necessary for the drawing apparatus to include a conversion processing circuit capable of performing division processing suitable for each optical system and converting the divided data into pattern data and a memory capable of storing the converted data.
The data conversion processing is a work requiring a relatively long time to process massive data. Therefore, in a case where a drawing apparatus including a plurality of optical systems performs overlapping drawing, the drawing apparatus would not to perform the drawing according to the drawing method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-19434. The data processing time and the data amount may increase according to the number of the optical systems.